CRASH
& Other Short Stories
AP Lit & Comp (Modern Lit)
Seventh Period, Fall/Winter 2009-2010
Mr. Zervanos
Meghan Quilter
CRASH
Her knees buckled, tears formed in the wells of her eyes, giving off the wrong impression to the smiling faces of her friends and family surrounding her. It wasn’t the place; she adored Couture Culinary, the new, upscale steakhouse that had just opened in the city a few blocks from her flat on 76th. It wasn’t the crowd, she looked around at her friends, her sister, her brothers, her beaming parents, her coworkers, she loved them all. It wasn’t the night, the night was immaculate, the sky was a calming shade of navy blue, dotted with thousands of promising stars winking back at her. She had just been promoted; her life had never been more perfect and carefree. She didn’t dare admit it, but she knew what it was. It was him. Alex Amsley, well-known attorney, the gorgeous, successful lawyer who was heads over heels in love with her was smiling up at her, the only blemish on his face being the confusion in his eyes. Her polite smile had worn off, sheer terror flashed across her eyes, changing her expression and highlighting creases in her face that Alex had never noticed before, signs of worry that even the most expensive makeup couldn’t hide. Her lips quivered, she glanced around the room, noting the confused and worried faces she imagined mirrored her own. She felt him pull away, her hand freed from his, the dead weight of the diamond on her finger dropping through space and landing with a thud against her thigh. The blow shocked her, and she sucked in a deep breath of the sweet, incense-filled air. She needed to get out. She needed to leave, needed to get away from all of this. The surprised faces, the accusation in their eyes, and most of all, the raw heartbreak in his. Her mind was frozen in place, words would not form, but her legs still knew when to run. Once she took the first step, she flew. She burst through the doors into the crisp, fall night and let go. She let the tears run their course, streaming down her face into her open mouth. She felt her pristine curls bounce wildly against her back, forgetting about the two hours she’d spent in a salon chair perfecting them. She ran through the city, ignoring the faces staring back at hers. She thought she heard her name in the breeze, but she refused to look back. She kept her face to the wind, her lungs on fire as she kept on sprinting. Noises and screams attacked her from all angles now, no longer behind her but in front of her, egging her on, daring her to come forward and find them for herself. She strived onward, turning the corner to an explosion; everything happened at once. Lights flashed, metal screeched through the streets, she felt the nails running down her eardrums as if they were chalkboards. The shock engulfed her at that point, it all was happening too quickly for her to wrap her head around it. She would only remember one thing. Crash.
*****
Always second best. Always. There wasn’t a single moment, not even one burst of brilliance where he had proved himself better than his brother. His younger brother, for Christ’s sake. He was supposed to teach his younger brother, show him the ways of the world, let him follow in his footsteps. That’s how it was supposed to be, anyway. Not in their family. Tommy was always the all-star, from the time he was two years old and had broken the family piñata in one, almighty swing. The shadow was cast on that fateful, Easter Sunday morning over three decades ago, and had yet to be lifted. Tommy was still the best, always the best. He was the sports guru, the club president, the homecoming king, the kid with the best looking girlfriends. And that was just in high school. It wasn’t like he was such a loser; he did all right in school, received good marks and got accepted to a nice college. Nice. Sum up his life in one word, all thirty-six years of his life, and you’d expect something sub par like that: nice, fine, satisfactory. Sum up Tommy’s life, on the other hand, and you’d find yourself swimming in a pool full of outstanding adjectives: brilliant, incredible, fantastic, or the real zinger; perfect. That was Tommy’s life, perfect. Always had been, and he wouldn’t be surprised if Tommy lived his perfect life all the way up until his perfect death. There were times when he could live with it. Sure, Tommy was perfect, so what? Didn’t mean he couldn’t be perfect too. Those were the optimistic times, and as he learned, they grew farther and further between. Then came the dark times, the times when he hated his brother. Broken were the bonds of love and brotherly companionship, he loathed Tommy. Tommy stole his girlfriend, got the captain spot on the baseball team, scored higher on the SATS, and robbed him of his parent’s affection. The dark times stayed with him for a long time, and as he grew some more, he fell into a natural routine for dealing with Tommy; tolerance. He tolerated him. For his parents’ sake, for his family, or even for himself, he tolerated the brilliance that wrapped Tommy in a mysterious aura every time he stepped into a room. The night of their parents’ anniversary was no different; Tommy was the center of attention, while he blended into the crowd, restraining himself from the anger boiling up, the accusations, the resentment. He tolerated his brother his whole life, why stop now? Why steal the limelight from Tommy at this moment, why cause a scene? Usually, the addition of alcohol at these family gatherings was enough to subdue him and allow him to remain discreet, but tonight was different. He watched Tommy, a new, slender blonde wrapped around his arm, clawing his firm back with her red, acrylic nails. He watched her whisper in his ear, no doubt further inflating his ego. He watched Tommy walk around the bar, with an adopted swagger he hadn’t noticed before. It sickened him. The tequila was really flowing through him now, the strong liquor burned his throat, running liquid fire through his veins, vamping him up. Fuck him, acting like he owned the place. This wasn’t Tommy’s bar, it wasn’t even his city. He was beginning to fade in and out, the people around him blurred into one, fiery mess of faces, all reminding him of Tommy. Before he knew it, Tommy’s face was in front of him. This wasn’t the liquor talking, it was the real Tommy, purring his accomplishments and bragging into his face once more. Not listening to what he was saying, not caring, he wound back his arm and let go, thirty-six years of pure hatred fused into one, earth-shattering punch. Chaos erupted, and he couldn’t make sense of the scene unfolding around him. The bar was in uproar, family members and friends all shaking their fists and holding the door open as he was unceremoniously thrown out of the building. But the chaos didn’t end there. Outside, on the busy streets of Manhattan, the scene reflected the wild, chaotic mess that he had just left inside the bar. Why were people screaming? He watched with glazed eyes as men stood in front of women, creating human barriers, watched people wave their hands in frenzy, gesturing wildly in his direction. He shook his fuzzy brain free and, still on the ground, turned behind him to see what the all the commotion was about. That’s when he saw it. Crash.
*****
At fifteen, she was six feet tall, and only 115 pounds. Her doctor assured her that it was only her overactive thyroid, and that the other girls would catch up. They didn’t. She spent her childhood being teased and nicknamed giraffe, freak, giant, she heard it all, constantly being tormented over something she couldn’t even control. It made her sick to her stomach, she cried herself to sleep and disappeared into a depression. Until eighteen, when she developed her late but ample, womanly curves, her hair adopted a new, healthy sheen, and her skin glowed with a white, wintery radiance as it never had before. The nicknames faded, and a new one took their place. Model. She was still different, a crooked nose stuck out at odd angles in the light, long limbs hung awkwardly at her sides, big hands and feet never appealed to the opposite sex. She longed to be short and small, a tiny girl like her classmates, the kind the boys chased. She’d forever been called beautiful, but her interpretation of the word was warped. She wasn’t beautiful, she was different. The girls with blonde highlights and California tans were beautiful, the girls with the blue eyes and whitened teeth were gorgeous. She was gawky, with bulging green eyes and skin so white it was almost transparent, with size 00 jeans falling off her protruding hip bones. She tried to fit in, but she was always unique. Uniqueness was not a blessing, but a curse, a social death sentence for those in the local public high school. So she continued through her four years as a student, hating her appearance and herself, holding her head down through the hallways and staying reclusive on weekends and holidays. The only good that came from her free time was her immaculate grades, a result of countless hours of studying on weekends and prom nights. Grades that granted her immediate acceptance into New York University, the school of her dreams. She fantasized about the possibility to start over new, to enter a school prided on its diverse body of students, finally finding a place where she felt she belonged. So she boarded the plane, never looking back at her old home, even as they flew over it on the way to the Big Apple. She started school that fall, showing up to her dorm on the first day of fall semester to find a beautiful, stereotypical, blonde hair and blue eyed bitch staring back at her. Her name was Madison, and she made her life a living hell from that very first day. Madison tormented her, teasing her and calling her names, much the same as they had done in grade school. College became a repeat of her home life. She hated it. She began cutting class, skipping school and wandering through the city, taking in the different cultures that surrounded her. As she trudged through the trendy Meatpacking District one afternoon, watching the spoiled, Upper East Side girls shop for their fall-season bags and booties, a gorgeous, tan man in a leather suit approached her, so quietly she almost hit him with her mace spray. His name was Leon, and he indulged her with compliment after compliment about her radiant beauty, God-given gorgeous looks and her unlimited possibilities. He took her back to his studio and hired her on the spot as a runway model for his fall collection. He was relatively unknown, but, then again, so was she, and posing for a camera for twenty minutes a day was heaven compared to sharing a bathroom with Madison. She loved it. Never had she felt so at home in any aspect of her life, much less smiling and posing in front of countless strangers. It gave her an adrenaline rush, so she pushed herself to her limits as much as she could. She stopped eating, and her skinny, 115 pound figure dropped to a skeletal 105. The critics loved it. Dedication, they called it, and they encouraged her to continue. Her protruding ribs and sunken cheekbones may have appeared sickly to the outside work, but they looked immaculate once cloaked in couture clothes and brushed with exquisite, mineral makeup. Leon continued to advertise her, lining up small photo shoots and magazine ads for her week by week. This continued for over four months, while she continued to skip school and starve herself, until, one day, Leon called her with the big break. She was up for a UMA review; an interview, photo shoot, casting and runway show with the Universal Modeling Agency, headquarters right in her district of New York City. It was booked three months in advance, and the anticipation had killed her. She smoked cigarettes for the stress, and her skin turned grey from the smoke, anxiety made her perfect complexion break out in bumps and spots all over, she binged on morning donuts and coffees until her belly bump was the talk of pregnancy and scandal. Leon saw her distress and booked her an emergency retreat to Connecticut, an exclusive, all expenses paid, week retreat at the state’s finest, five star spa getaway. She came back positively glowing, a radiance that even Leon hadn’t expected. And now the casting call was finally here. She stomped her heels ferociously on the runway carpet, turned her sleek neck at all the right angles to catch the light of the photo shoot, and smiled politely at all the uptight, pole-up-their-ass bitches who interviewed her. She waited, hour by hour ticking by at a snail’s pace, for the sweet, chubby secretary to come back and offer her full-time employment by the agency. She heard a noise and looked up from her magazine, watching the girl’s strawberry blonde curls bounce off her round cheeks, a bright smile on her face and a thick envelope in her hands. Her insides fluttered, the first time she’d ever had butterflies. This was it; she was going to make it big. The chubby girl took her sweet time walking over, clutching the thick manila folder in her sweaty palms. She wanted to jump up and wrench it from her hands, hold it up in the air and cheer for her success; however, she waited like a good girl, smiling as she waited for her prize. She watched the secretary through the glass door straight ahead and stood up, just as the girl made a hard left and approached a girl she hadn’t even noticed, a paper-thin girl with olive skin, raven hair and violet eyes. She heard the bubbly voice of the secretary as she watched the package pass on to the mysterious girl’s unpolished, cracked hands. She smiled, and turned to leave, envelope tucked under the arm of her beaten, leather jacket, combat boots trekking mud through the office as she left. That girl, that dirty, trashy girl had beaten her. Leon was wrong, they all were wrong, she wasn’t beautiful, she wasn’t unique, and she wasn’t going to make it big. She was ugly. She was disgusted by herself, disgusted by everyone and everything. She didn’t stick around to hear the pity speech the secretary had crafted, she turned on a dime and followed the muddy footsteps of the beautiful, dumb bitch that had bested her. In the stairwell, frustration took its toll on her as furious tears streaked her face, hot and wet, they stained her perfect skin and reminded her of her failure. She began to scream, jolting, high-pitched bursts that she couldn’t control. She kicked open the agency door, her kitten heels barely leaving a mark, and let out a prolonged, high-pitched howl throughout the street. She wouldn’t stop, couldn’t, until she realized that she couldn’t even hear herself. Something was drowning her own voice out. She opened her teary eyes and saw a flash. Crash.
*****
Broadway was the best place to go when you were high, just sit in the middle of the street and watch the taxis whiz by, the flashing lights going off like fireworks in your brain. It was always a different high for him, depending on his mood and his current drug of choice. Today, he wasn’t feeling too good, so he’d opted for acid, a little LSD to boost his mood when nothing else could. The warm, dripping effect of the chemicals wrapped his body in a blanket that even the cold, brisk October chill couldn’t penetrate. His eyes closed, and his mind drifted into the last recesses of his brain.